


Twelve Days (Christmas 2017)

by storiewriter



Series: Bentley Farkas and Friends [22]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: 12 Days of Christmas, Christmas, Gen, Na Leo, all rolled together, and sadness, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 13:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12912705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiewriter/pseuds/storiewriter
Summary: “Those are absolutely hideous,” Bentley said of the five pig statuettes that Torako opened, her face lit up with glee.“They’re perfect,” she said.12 drabbles based on Na Leo's 12 days of Christmas.





	Twelve Days (Christmas 2017)

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR I only had one class today so I spent a couple hours writing this. Not really proofread. Using Na Leo's 12 days of Christmas variation.

12 Days of Christmas

 

_Twelve raw opihi-_

 

Every Christmas, growing up, Torako’s family would serve raw opihi. When Bentley heard about this, he just about fell off her bed in awe.

      “I mean, I knew it was expensive, but is it really _that_ expensive?” Torako had asked, spinning a pen between her fingers.

“Torako,” Bentley said, clutching one of her pillows for strength. “I have never had opihi. I have only dreamed of sampling one single, delicious, disgustingly expensive shellfish. The closest I’ve gotten to opihi in real life is when I stood on New Sacramento Cliff and weighed the benefits and drawbacks of climbing down myself to get a couple—don’t look at me like that, I know it’s dangerous, but if I got three then my dad could have one, I could have one, and I could sell another to get some extra money.”

Torako stared at him, and for the first time really felt the financial difference between them.

“I mean,” Bentley said, blushing, glancing at thin air to his left and then back at her, “it’s not like we’re unable to survive, and we’re pretty comfortable, but we definitely don’t have enough for more than like, one opihi a year, and that’s not worth it.” Then he changed the subject, but Torako kept that information in the back of her head, waiting for the right time. Then, Freshman year, at Christmas, her family express-sent a dozen raw opihi, and Torako got to see the bliss on Bentley’s face as he experienced one of the most expensive delicacies of the Pacific Ocean.

They had opihi for many, many years after that.

 

_-Eleven mu’umu’u-_

 

The mu’umu’u was a soft shade of pink, and had discrete designs in shimmering silver thread. Bentley lifted it to his chest and watched the fabric fall over his legs, long and ruffled and perfect. In more ways than one, actually, because he couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

“Not quite the reaction I was expecting, but I’ll take it, sure,” Torako said, grinning at Bentley even as a dipnipped-out Dipper licked her hair up into spikes. “What’s got you all cackling there?”

Bentley waved at her pile of presents and said, “just open the green mistletoe one, okay?”

Torako rolled her eyes and tugged the right one into her lap. She hefted it once, twice in her hands, then made short work of the wrapping to reveal cloth, dark blue lanced through with patterns dyed cyan.

She looked up from the mu’umu’u in her lap, wide-eyed for a moment with shock, and then laughed. “I guess we’ve got to get one for Dipper now too and make it a family thing, don’t we?”

      Bentley thought of the eleven other dresses he’d been looking at online, and figured that one of them would have to suit his brother.

 

_-Ten rainbow shave ice-_

 

“Come on Bentley,” Torako hissed, her lips stained with food coloring and artificial flavor, “ten each, you can do it, it’s only one more and then we win!”

Bentley stared at the last rainbow shave ice on the table before him. His head swam with the merciless cold from the last nine he’d downed. He reached a trembling hand out and pulled the shave ice towards him.

“It’s just ice and syrup,” Dipper hissed, “it’s nothing, come on, we have cash money to get out of this.”

Who needed enemies, he thought, when your friends were willing to abandon you to the frozen claws of too much shave ice, all for the sake of meaningless cash. Methodically, he started to lift spoonful by spoonful of shave ice into his mouth, head wailing the whole while.

“Thirty seconds left, Bentley, oh my god just hurry—Dipper, I’ll give you a bag of gummy worms if you—”

“On it,” Dipper said, and next thing Bentley knew there was ice pouring down his throat, so fast and smooth there wasn’t even time to choke before it was an unsettling sensation in his stomach. Distantly, he heard Dipper and Torako cheering over their hard-won cash as his knees hit the ground a few seconds before his head did, and the last cognizant thought on his mind before they got home was that Dipper and Torako were going to pay for their indescretions.

 

_-Nine pounds of poi-_

 

“Who the fuck,” Bentley wheezed, helping Torako carry the package up the stairs to her apartment, “needs nine pounds of poi?”

“My extended family is large and we all like it very much,” Torako said, not even slightly out of breath. He hated her. He also hated Dipper, invisible and floating behind his friend’s head, making funny (disturbing) faces to try to get a rise out of Bentley. “You don’t have to help, you know.”

“I’m here,” Bentley said, arms trembling, “so I’m going to help, dammit. But I want payback, so much payback, because _nine pounds of poi_.”

“There’s even more in the truck!” Torako grinned at him, holding her end of the package one handed as she gestured down the stairs, and Bentley could swear he felt his soul leave his body a little.

 

_-Eight ukulele-_

 

Lata started playing instruments when she was seven, and she never quite went back. She started with a little ukulele at Christmas, plucking at the strings at random and with the kind of inattention that would embarrass them when they were older and knew exactly how fast and true their fingers could flyover the strings. They played many instruments—piano, harmonica, violin, drums, jumping from tool to tool until she came right back around to the ukulele, nine years old and still well-tuned. Lata would sit on rainy weekends for hours, humming and absentmindedly pulling music out of her childhood instrument, the tiny berries on her tiny antlers swaying as she did so. She played for her parents, for her Aunt and Uncles, for her classmates, lovers, coworkers. Lata never went pro with the ukulele—they weren’t confident enough, didn’t have the stomach for entertainment—but they played, and they played, and they played. Over their life, they owned eight ukulele, carefully maintained, sparsely decorated. The last was buried with her.

 

_-Seven shrimp a-swimming-_

 

“How many shrimp do you have in your linguini?”

“Ten, you?”

“Seven, so you better hand over two of yours otherwise I’m arresting you for unfair pasta.”

“I know it’s Dipper and all, but I still don’t think that unfair pasta is a reasonable charge, Torako.”

“Oh yeah? How many do you have, Mr. Mom?”

“My plate is empty.”

“Then you better _throw it all back up so we can count_ , you little—no, get back here you heathen, you despicable—I want my shrimp, damn you Bentley!”

 

_-Six hula lessons-_

 

Torako remembers hula lessons in the way that many mainland children remember ballet lessons: fun at first, but progressively more boring the older you got. She got through six years before begging her dads to let her quit and do something actually fun, like hurling, which had a lot more shoving people and ball-chucking and there were sticks you could hit people with. She got hurling lessons for Christmas, and didn’t think of hula again.

When Bentley was five, he wanted to dance with all his heart, watched dancers of a thousand different styles and rhythm move their bodies in ways that made his heart sing with desire. He loved hula the most, the grace and power of it, the sway of heavy skirts and the smell of flowers saturating the air. Philip bought him six lesson’s worth of hula from the local dance center, but that was all he could afford so Bentley moved on to quieter, more realistic dreams with the taste of hula still humming in his bones.

 

_-Five big fat pigs-_

 

“Those are absolutely hideous,” Bentley said of the five pig statuettes that Torako opened, her face lit up with glee.

“They’re perfect,” she said, hefting one with lopsided eyes and a chef’s hat. “This is everything I ever wanted, and Dad knows me _so well_. It’s going right in the front entryway, where everybody will see it when they come in and it’s going to be the absolute _best_.”

Bentley eyed the menacing, overweight figurines and wondered how much he’d need to bribe Dipper (or Torako, for that matter) to move them somewhere a little more out of the way.

_-Four flower leis-_

 

Bentley doesn’t remember it, but on his third birthday, he and his father went out to the beach with four leis, carefully cradled in florist’s stasis wrap, and stepped ankle-deep into the water. Philip placed one lei around his own neck, one around his son’s, and twisted the other two around a stone the size of two fists put together. He hefted it in his hand, the weight of his son heavy in his other arm, and closed his eyes. “Susan,” he murmured, and a slight chill from the mid-December breeze caught the hair on the back of his neck right before he threw the stone into the ocean, the juice of crushed flowers lingering on the skin of his palm and in the crease of his fingers even as the ocean swallowed the stone, the flowers, with softer embrace than it had his wife.

 

_-Three dried aku-_

 

Torako threw a package of dried _aku_ at Dipper, pouting as she did so. “No fair,” she whined, “Bentley got me those for Christmas, and do you know how hard it is to get actual dried _aku_ on the mainland?” Dipper, mid-bite of skipback tuna, grinned at her with dried fish stuck between his sharkish teeth, and said, “Well, it’s worth the deal then, isn’t it?”

 

_-Two coconuts-_

 

“Hey handsome,” Torako purred, and when Bentley turned despite his better instincts there she was, lounging on the table in nothing more than a santa hat, a coconut bra, and one of those silly plastic wrap skirts cheap tourist places in the Californian Federation liked to sell. Torako opened her mouth, cupped one of the coconuts on her chest; before she could speak, Bentley interrupted with a “No, Torako, I don’t want to buy a coconut or drink any milk, get out of my kitchen before I brain you with the rolling pin.”

 

_-and One myna bird in one papaya tree_

 

Bentley had distinct memories of early December in his childhood, laying under the papaya trees in the park with his father, snacking on sweet lumpia and listening to the endless chatter of the myna birds above, laughing when his father talked to them and the starlings echoed his own words back, no matter how silly or sweet.

 


End file.
